Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Why no vaccines?

According to Marginal Revolution, liability risk, government monopsony power forcing down low prices, and public abhorence to actually paying (directly) for health care has driven firms to exit the market, or the decrease production of vaccines leading to shortages in case anything bad happens.

Government price controls on healthcare do not reduce healthcare costs, they merely shift costs from being explicit and borne by today's consumers of drugs that already exist today, to being implicit and borne by tomorrow's consumers of drugs that will (now) never be invented. Why does no one ever think about the children?